Girls' Trip - SoCal!

This past weekend, Jenna, Trac and I all went down to Southern California for a girls' trip to visit Dresel and her new baby, Steven. Since the little guy was only a few months old, we thought the majority of the trip would involve quiet lunches with a few laid-back BBQs. We were happily surprised to find out that Dresel was ready for her first ladies night since having him! Yea for all of us!! Here are some pics of our fun weekend in Newport Beach/Laguna Beach/Irvine.

All of us out in Laguna Beach. Love these girls so much. We always pick up right where we left off.

Since we stayed in a hotel right across from the beach in Newport Beach, we walked over there a few times. We were lucky enough to get beautiful weather the entire trip!

Okay, so we did have a BBQ one night. Dresel and her mini-me at Troy & Dresel's house on our last night.

The cute little peanut :)

Ahhh...love it here! Can't wait to visit again soon!

Tristan's 3rd bday!

Today we celebrated Tristan's 3rd (already??) birthday. What a little man we have! He is such a sweet, loving, thoughtful and smart boy. We are so blessed to have him in our lives. It's amazing to see how much he has grown in the past six months and how much he knows. I really love this age that he is at! Here are some other milestones/highlights of him at 3:
*He loves the movie Cars and everything that comes with it - especially all the characters, which he has been collecting quite a bit of!
*It's really amazing how his language and communication has grown in the past year. He now can say/understand everything. It still takes me by surprise sometimes at how much he comprehends. I still think of him as my little toddler sometimes and forget that he is now such a boy. I love it!
*He loves to ask me to do the sounds of all of his different cars. I have to make up 30 different car sounds because he knows if they sound a little similar. And then he has to repeat the car sounds as he plays.
*He still loves to play his guitars and pound away on his drums. Which has also sparked an interest in Talia, too. Maybe a future George sibling duo?
*He loves his little sister. Since he usually wakes up after her, when he comes downstairs, they immediately go to one another and give each other hugs and kisses. He also laughs at all the silly things she does which just makes Talia do even more silly/crazy things. It warms my heart to see their relationship grow :)
*He knows all his colors, shapes, recognizes about half the alphabet and can count to 20 pretty effortlessly. He can draw many of the shapes and the letter T and number 1. We're still working on writing all of the numbers/letters.
*He also just surprised me the other day by being able to draw a person, complete with a head, legs, arms and other features. Of course it was super basic, but I didn't realize he could already do that!
*He is really a sweet boy and I hope he continues to stay that way. It really is a good characteristic to have. He is also a rule-follower most of the time and doesn't like it when others do not follow the rules. In fact, it can really make him mad sometimes when he sees others not respecting the rules. Hmmmm...sounds familiar :)
*Since our ipad has been on the fritz lately, he hasn't been as into youtube videos and is more into watching cartoons like Team Umizoomi, Dora and Peter Rabbit.
*He's really starting to get into puzzles, especially at mommy's favorite coffee shop!
*He's also starting to develop his own sense of humor, which already seems pretty similar to my brother and me :) He has this ongoing joke with me about one of the cartoons he likes. Every time I turn it on, he always says the same thing, quietly waits for me to fall for the joke, and then does his sly smile and laughs. Just another way he reminds me of my brother! - someone I've had at least a half dozen inside jokes with since we were little :)

Opening his morning bday card

Making bday pancakes with mom!

Trying (again!) to get a sibling pic

Not sure which cousin was the most excited to see what Tristan was unwrapping :)

I knew I would score with both boys with anything Lightning McQueen-related. And of course the boys loved the track that their cars could race on.

Rainbow chip is usually the traditional must-have cake for everyone's birthday, but for some reason, an ice cream cake sounded scrumptious this year. SO happy we went this route instead. I caught the adults sneaking more helpings than the kids. There's just something so fantastic about ice cream and frozen cake mixed together :)

Pretty sure this was taken at the peak of the sugar high

Happy birthday, T!! We all love you so much!!

Mother's Day

We had such a nice Mother's Day this year. It started out with breakfast at our favorite restaurant, Jackson's Corner (somewhere we always go for a special event because we can sit outside while the kids play - genius!), followed by a family bike ride and then ended with a yard project that we have been thinking about for weeks - finally putting pavers down on the dirt pile on the side of the house - yea!! Sounds pretty perfect to me :)

Blessed to be their mommy :)

Before...

Getting closer... Just one project out of many that needs to be completed in the backyard!

The GGs

Since Aunt Michelle made the decision to go back to school to become an RN, Eli has joined us a few days a week. We've called our new group the GG Academy ("The GGs" is what I call the George/Goody kids :). The teacher in me definitely comes out as we have a schedule of events that we try to stick to each day that the Academy is in session. A typical day would be: breakfast, 3 1/2 hour/mile walk/bike ride to various parks, River Canyon Trail and then neighborhood coffee shop (coffee for me, treat for kids!) with a picnic snack along the way. Then we have lunch, learning games and/or story time, followed by two cartoons, learning games and play time. It makes me feel happy to have some sort of structure and learning apart of my day. And now that Talia is older, it's a lot easier to do these things now!

Awww... :)

This was completely unplanned. They were riding their bikes ahead of me when they decided to stop, get off their bikes and hug. Really sweet moment I was lucky enough to catch :)

Practicing our ABCs

Beautiful views from our walk/bike rides

Picnic lunch at our favorite view and treats at our favorite coffee shop!

Beastie Boys - New Generation

Spring has sprung!

Spring is one of my favorite times of year. I love the order of spring flowers that bloom each year and look forward to the first daffodils, then tulips, then irises that pop up. Usually, this happens around late February/early March in Portland. This is our first full spring in Bend, and I was a little surprised to see that the season starts a little later than on the westside of the mountains. (Maybe it was because of the April blizzard we had??) The flowers just appeared on the trees and the daffodils are just now starting to make an appearance here. By this time each year on the westside, all of the flowers are already on the trees and we are moving beyond the tulips. Late or not, I still love the season of spring! Here are some of the fun outdoor activities we are finally starting to do!

We usually take the BOB and Tristan's bike each time we go to the park, but on this day for some reason, neither child wanted to ride that mode of transportation and decided to walk with me instead...at a snail's pace. Here, Tristan is trying to encourage Talia to be a bit faster :)

Chalk drawings is always a favorite. (And yikes, please ignore the bare grass in the background - not only an eyesore but also a pain to try and fix with three dogs who make the outside their bathroom...)

Another reason to love Bend - all of the bike trails and bridges along the Deschutes River. This was our first time on this specific trail and loved how beautiful it was!

As you can see, we spend most of our time at the park these days :)

Or, we have our own playground fun at home.

Portland trip - Uncle T & Talia's birthdays!

This past weekend, we went to Portland so that we could celebrate Uncle T and Talia's birthdays with my family. Just another excuse to "go over the big mountains where Lincoln lives!" as Tristan says :)

We started the weekend by going to the Children's Museum to celebrate Talia's birthday. We also went there on Tristan's first birthday, so thought it would be fun to do the same for Talia. Along with Uncle T, Lincoln and Grama, we were so excited to have Ali & Aubrey join us as well - one of Tristan's BFFs!

Tristan's favorite part of the Children's Museum - music playing!

Our birthday spread - little hard to set up on tables where space to sit down was like gold :)

Wow, someone was a little messy/drooly!

And then the celebrating continued back at the Danners with a celebration for Uncle T and Talia! And of course I baked for days to get ready for the event. You only have one 1st birthday, right??